The criterion

The XI is inspired by Mark Wood. One of the fastest bowlers to have played Test cricket, Wood’s career has been plagued by injuries. Now almost 36, it may prove difficult to add to his 38 Tests or 119 wickets.

For the Mark Wood XI, we have considered male cricketers who retired without playing 40 Test matches, and debuted after the start of 1970 (to exclude pre-war careers which were invariably short, and exclude instances of war or apartheid ban-interrupted ones). Wood, not having retired yet, does not make the cut.

Wisden’s 'bright but brief' Test XI

Mark Richardson

M: 38 | 2,776 runs at 44.77, HS: 145, 4 hundreds | bowled some left-arm spin

Barring Glenn Turner (whose debut year rules him out of this XI), Richardson is the only New Zealand opener to score 2,000 Test runs at an average of 40. A left-arm spinner who dismissed Sachin Tendulkar on his first-class debut, Richardson took a laborious route up the batting order in first-class cricket before establishing himself as an opener whose Test cricket dropped below 45 only in his last Test. Throughout his career, Richardson picked the slowest runner of the opposition and challenged him to an after-series sprint: he will revive that here as well.

Chris Rogers

M: 25 | 2,015 runs at 42.87, HS: 173, 5 hundreds

Left in the wilderness after a forgettable debut in end-2008, Rogers almost lost his state contract in 2012 – but found his way to the top of the Australian batting line-up in 2013. Nearly 36 then, he played for another two years with distinction, forging a formidable opening pair with David Warner. In all, he crossed fifty 19 times in 25 Tests, and equalled the world record of a fifty in each of seven consecutive innings.

Lawrence Rowe

M: 30 | 2,047 runs at 43.55, HS: 302, 7 hundreds

Still the only batter with a double hundred and a hundred on Test debut, Rowe improved even on that start with a scintillating triple hundred. So incredible was his stroke-play that Michael Holding, his junior at Jamaica, mentioned in his autobiography that he had “not seen such perfection since”. After 12 Tests, his average stood at 70.68. Then everything changed. During a stint with Derbyshire, he was diagnosed to be allergic to grass. Then he struggled to see the ball in the nets: the opticians diagnosed pterygium, a growth that blurred his eyesight. Surgery did not help, and the archaic contact lenses made his eyes water. The man they once compared to George Headley gradually disappeared into obscurity.

Andrew Jones

M: 39 | 2,922 runs at 44.27, HS: 186, 7 hundreds

Almost 28 when he made his Test debut, Jones is batting a position lower than his No.3 here. He would have been celebrated more had New Zealand won more than six of the 39 Tests he played in. Despite his unusual technique against short-pitched bowling, he averaged 53.91 in Australia. He is usually remembered most for his three consecutive hundreds against Sri Lanka in 1990/91 (including two in the same Test and a then-world record stand of 467 with Martin Crowe).

Darren Lehmann

M: 27 | 1,798 runs at 44.95, HS: 177, 5 hundreds | 15 wickets at 27.46, BBI: 3-42

Lehmann’s first-class record (25,795 runs at 57.83) is identical to Tendulkar’s (25,388 at 57.84), and it is a testimony to the greatness of the Australian side of the 2000s that he played only 27 Tests. An excellent player of spin, Lehmann’s superb batting against Muttiah Muralidaran & co. was a key factor behind Australia’s famous win in 2004. He did not always bowl, but when he did, he could bowl long spells – and is the second spinner of the XI. The only caveat? Richardson had once picked Lehmann as Australia’s slowest runner and won the challenge...

Wriddhiman Saha (wk)

M: 40 | 1,353 runs at 29.41, HS: 117, 3 hundreds | Ct: 91, St: 12

A bit of cheating here, but he debuted as a specialist batter, so the gloveman Saha’s career never reached 40 Tests. MS Dhoni and Rishabh Pant often got the nod ahead of him, but when he got his chance, Saha out-’kept those who kept him out. Few wicketkeepers have been as comfortable while keeping to pace and spin in the most testing of conditions. It is not about the glovework alone: among all keepers who meet the conditions of this XI, he has the best batting average in the 1,000-run club.

Ryan Harris

M: 27 | 113 wickets at 23.52, BBI: 7-117, 5 5WIs | 603 runs at 21.53, HS 74, 3 fifties

The only fast bowler to take a hundred Test wickets despite debuting after 30, Harris would have been even more prolific had his career not been one long saga of injuries. A salient feature of Harris’ career was his ability to eke out wickets with long, hostile, fast spells in any condition: he played Test cricket in six countries and averaged under 31 in each of them. He is perhaps batting too high, but this side does have a long tail.

Saeed Ajmal

M: 35 | 178 wickets at 28.10, BBI: 7-55, 10 5WIs, 4 10WMs

So late was Ajmal’s debut – at nearly 32 – that it is almost impossible to believe that he is less than a year younger than Saqlain Mushtaq. But he made up for lost time by taking more than five wickets a Test (apart from dominating the two limited-overs formats). He had five-wicket hauls in England and South Africa, and would certainly have had a longer career had his bowling action been scrutinised (and potentially refined) in his early days.

Colin Croft

M: 27 | 125 wickets at 23.30, BBI: 8-29, 3 5WIs

Fast and hostile, Croft’s unusual bowling action featured him running in exactly behind the umpire before emerging at the last moment and veering away to deliver a bouncer or a yorker from the corner of the crease: the round-the-wicket angle was perhaps even more awkward. All that made it extremely difficult for batters to handle someone of his pace or hostility. The second point is crucial, for he famously barged into umpire Fred Goodall, and a teammate believed he would not hesitate to bounce his grandmother “if he thought there was a wicket in it.” A pioneer on several counts, Croft became an airlines pilot and was one of the first cricketers to turn an online cricket columnist.

Shane Bond

M: 18 | 87 wickets at 22.09, BBI: 6-51, 5 5WIs, 1 10WM

Injuries are a logical common point to this XI, but even on this list, few suffered more than Bond, whose 18 Tests were spread across eight years. When he did play, he seemed like the rightful heir to Richard Hadlee despite a forgettable debut series. Do his 82 ODIs, being a larger sample size, tell a better story? There, he had 147 wickets at 20.88 – but against Australia of that era, one of the best ODI sides of all time, that number read 44 wickets at a ridiculous 15.79.

Mohammad Asif

M: 23 | 106 wickets at 24.36, BBI: 6-41, 7 5WIs, 1 10WM

This is an XI of what-ifs, but Asif stands out even among them. He could move the ball prodigiously off the seam in either direction, and was one of the first truly great practitioner of the wobble-seam (watching him help James Anderson master the craft). He was on his way to carve a niche for himself in the land of fast bowlers, but then came the controversies. After three drug-related incidents (two for use, one for possession) and a dressing-room incident (Shoaib Akhtar hit him with a bat), he succumbed to the Cult of Mammon.